Getting social with Cosmoprof North America

This post about Cosmoprof North America is for educational purposes. I am not associated with them, nor is my educational institution.

Cosmoprof North America is a business to business beauty trade show with over 26,000 visitors and 911 exhibitors from 37 countries that took place July 13-15, 2014 in Las Vegas, NV. If you are like me and enjoy trendy and quality products and brands, this is actually a really fun trade show to familiarize yourself with.

Cosmoprof North America is active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn (private group), Pinterest, Instagram and their newly launched YouTube account. You are also able to sign up for an email newsletter via the Cosmoprof North America website to stay up to date and in touch and you can also download the Cosmoprof app for iPhone or Android.

Connecting with people via social media can be an important marketing tool for the success of events and businesses. As you are now aware, Cosmoprof North America is on a variety of different platforms and has the ability to reach a large amount of users. Prior to the trade show, the Cosmoprof network that was the most active happened to be Twitter. On this platform, users were instructed to use the hashtag #Cosmoprofna for their Instagram photos.

Cosmoprof North America attendees and vendors definitely listened! Upon a quick search on Instagram, it seems that they had a really great response with a plethora of images! Many exhibitors took photos of their space and products while attendees took photos of themselves interacting with displays they thought were really cool.

On the Cosmoprof Instagram, there weren’t any posts highlighting the upcoming events. Actually, the Instagram had remained quiet without a single post the five weeks prior to the beginning of the Vegas show. On the contrary, Facebook did preface the the trade show with regular postings regarding event reminders, exhibitor listings and information–all of which directed readers back to their website. The hashtag used on Facebook for pre-event posts was #Cosmoprof.

The evening before the trade show began, Cosmoprof North America’s Instagram became active again with insider photos for where tickets could be picked up, interactive experience area container and attendee sample boxes. No hashtags were used. Instagram posts continued through the trade show with the domestic buyers meet and greet, VIP reception, some of their vendor’s booths and different products that were available. There was not an overwhelming amount of photos and what was posted was of really great quality where people looked happy to be part of the festivities. Hashtags used included: #tattoojunkie, #gbodyartpro, #trendscouts, #cpna2014 (used twice), #lasvegas, #beautyweek, and #Marianna.

During trade show, Guile des Princesses was a featured photo on Facebook with booth information. Review videos and blogs were also posted by Cosmoprof North America where event attendees talked about different products that they liked. The posts typically received anywhere between 3-6 likes.

On Twitter, Cosmoprof was very active with retweeting different exhibitors that were sharing information about their booths and products. The following screen cap is from day one on July 13th, but if you go through their entire timeline from the event, they continued to follow this trend through the duration.

Also on Twitter, hashtagging was used on the booth numbers rather than the company names. If someone who is attending the show or wants to follow the show on the social platforms, they are not going to use a letter with numbers to tag their post (in fact, I clicked the hashtags used and there were not any other posts associated with it). Rather, users are going to do something easy and more ideal to search for like a company name or product type (i.e.: #nailpolish).

Something that stood out to me and that I really loved was how Cosmoprof North America included vloggers in their trade show! I thought this was such a creative way for businesses to have an added benefit for being present or for sponsoring. So many people are using social media to check out product reviews and recommendations and this was putting notable reviewers in a place where companies could potentially have their products showcased on the vlogs.

On the other hand, While their visual branding was consistent across the different platforms they take part in, the hashtags were disconnected leaving one to wonder if different people run each of the different accounts and didn’t talk about how hashtags are used and which would be best for Cosmoprof North America to use. The ball was definitely tossed–just not caught. Improvements can be made to help strengthen IMC and overall consistency on the web.

I will say that the thing I was most disappointed about was the fact Cosmoprof North America took the time to tweet everyone and let them to use a specific hashtag on Instagram, and the brand failed to use the hashtag themselves.

Instagram looks to be a platform where Cosmoprof North America can expand greatly on. The quality of their photos during the convention was great, but they needed to use their #Cosmoprofna hashtag on all of their photos and also include additional hashtags on products they were showcasing at their beauty bar and vendor booths to try to draw more attention in search results on the platform to their individual photos from the trade show.

The Pinterest account remained silent throughout the entire ordeal, so it will be interesting to see if event photos are eventually posted showcasing the different exhibitors, unique displays and setups and interesting things to highlight the 2014 trade show.

As an event coordinator myself, I immediately also noticed that sponsors did not have their own individual tab on the Cosmoprof North America website and upon further inspection, I still did not see a list of sponsors of any sort. Regardless if a list or a special area with logos does indeed exist on the website, it needs to be given a higher priority. Sponsors are looking to maximize exposure through all facets of the event and are more likely to be happy and return when you’re able to wow them with not only numbers of vendors and attendees, but by the amount of traffic that is coming through your website and seeing their logo or business name.

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